AM Radio: July 2024

The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.

This month’s edition of AM Radio is in, and this time, there’s a global wave of new music in tow: Across the international waters from Australia (courtesy of friends of Anti-Matter, Speed) to Sweden (Nowheres) to the UK-based trifecta of Hell Can Wait, Mourner, and Still In Love. From hard (Overthrow and Hold My Own) to even harder (GEL, Doubt, and Skullpresser—who feature members of Mannequin Pussy and the Wonder Years) on domestic shores. And of course, there’s the long-awaited first single from a new and forthcoming Touché Amoré album. (It is, of course, fucking great.) There are seventeen new tracks in all to discover.

As always, AM Radio is not a running list of every new release, but a selection of personally handpicked music that reflects only those songs that personally excite me—with no outside influence or interference ever. A new batch of standout tracks from this month’s selection follows below.

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DRUG CHURCH “Demolition Man” (Pure Noise)

They’re one of the best bands we have—and they have been for a while now—but while so many aspiring songwriters are out there striving to recapture Drug Church’s low-slung, driving groove, few seem to have figured out that it’s the concise and cutting insights that really flesh out why Drug Church have also become one of the most important bands we have. Take, for example: “Picture being built for one thing / and when that thing is done, you feel free.” I mean, imagine being able to sum up human desire in one couplet.

BUY IT: Bandcamp | Vinyl

SUBURBAN EYES “Headlight Torches” (Spartan)

So many years later, when people talk about Christie Front Drive, Boy’s Life, and Mineral, there’s an assumption that the orbit these bands shared was an offshoot of what we now call “Midwest emo.” But that’s reductive, inaccurate, and not particularly helpful. Suburban Eyes, a new band comprised of former members of those bands, rights that wrong with further clarity: “Headlight Torches” is a moving model of post-punk in the vein of Hüsker Dü and Moving Targets—and it’s really not so removed from the work that gave their early bands such enduring renown.

BUY IT: Bandcamp | Vinyl

MILITARIE GUN “Thought You Were Waving” (Loma Vista)

If there’s one thing Ian Shelton made clear in our conversation from earlier this year, it’s that he is absolutely incapable of not writing. So one year after their breakthrough album, Life Under The Gun, and six months after a follow-up EP, Militarie Gun return with “Thought You Were Waving”—a melancholic power-pop track with post-hardcore grit and one of the best music video treatments I’ve seen in recent memory.

BUY IT: Bandcamp

BERTHOLD CITY “The Cost” (WAR Records)

It’s been really rewarding to watch Berthold City’s development, from its slightly reticent start as a passion project for Strife’s Andrew Kline to the impending release of Where Did We Go Wrong?—a compelling new album that reaps all of the confidence and experience of its architect with palpable energy. And you simply cannot fuck around when you bring in the voice of Warzone’s Raybeez—giving one of hardcore’s most iconic speeches—to emphasize the point.

BUY IT: Bandcamp

EYE FOR AN EYE “Signs of the Pride” (Deathwish Inc.)

There’s an interesting blindspot in hardcore history composed of Northeast bands who typically formed near the end of the ‘80s but really came of age between 1990 and 1992. They were “post-hardcore” in a way that still tethered closer to actual hardcore; they experimented with mid-tempos and melodic phrasings with more rawness than the bands that came after. They also played together a lot. Bands like Kingpin, Arise, and Another Wall were among them. But Eye For An Eye were—along with Supertouch and Burn—one of the first, and they’ve managed to maintain a sense of reverence (and relevance) among those of us who remember. Which is probably why Deathwish just remastered and re-released the band’s discography and Have Heart personally invited the reunited band to play their recent Boston blowout. This just holds up.

BUY IT: Bandcamp | Vinyl

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